On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 11:12:46PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net> writes:
>
> > To my understanding the only way to obtain the license information for a
> > package is to actually download it (or install it) and the study the
> > content of
>
> > /usr/share/doc/<package>/copyright
>
> > It would be better if user could use the packaging search commands, like
>
> > grep-dctrl -F License ... --and -F package ...
>
> Out of curiosity, why? What problem are you trying to solve?
>
> > PROPOSAL:
>
> > Add new field to the debian/control (which would be generated by
> > dh-make):
>
> > License:
>
> > It would contain a canonicalized word to describe the license in
> > questions, like:
>
> > GPL, GPL2, GPL3, LGPL, BSD, Perl Artistic, MIT/X ..... Custom
>
> This has been proposed before. One of the problems with this idea is that
> many packages have more complex licenses than that, ones that cannot be
> easily encapsulated into a single term. Many packages contain files under
> various different licenses and many packages are covered under minor
> modifications to standard licenses, so coming up with these terms becomes
> a bit complicated, can't be fully accurate, and seems likely to spawn a
> complicated set of rules that are hard to verify.
>
> In other words, it seems like a lot of work, and it's not clear what
> problem it would really solve.
Hi,
would it provide any automation or easier processing for the NEW
queue(ftpmasters)? would it allow for reducing package size by removing
license text from all packages and having them installed in a seperate
essential package stored in a canonical location
(/usr/share/doc/dfsg-license-texts/) (dfsg-license-texts.deb) and have a
file-license.txt to list which files are licensed under which license?
Cheers,
Kev
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